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What It Means to Be Moderate
March 1, 2016 Can an essentially human trait describe a political stance?
By George Friedman
In Iran’s Feb. 26 elections, President Hassan Rouhani’s moderates were said to have defeated
the extremists. Moderation is taken as obviously praiseworthy, so the real meaning of that
phrase was that the the good guys beat the bad guys. But what makes Rouhani a good guy and
his opponents bad guys? From the American point of view, it’s that Rouhani signed the nuclear
treaty while his opponents wanted to block it. Of course that would logically mean that
Americans who opposed the treaty would regard Rouhani as the bad guy and his opponents who
opposed the treaty good guys. I don’t suppose that would be the case, so we are left to search
for meaning.
This discussion is important in most political contexts because moderation is seen as a virtue
and extremism as a vice, to paraphrase and reverse Barry Goldwater. This is a concept that
crosses national and cultural lines. Moderate political parties are seen as praiseworthy and
extreme ones are dangerous. To understand what is meant by moderate, we should begin by
understanding what we mean by extremist. It would seem to me that the most reasonable
definition of extremist is someone who wants to radically change the status quo. A moderate is
someone, therefore, who defends the status quo or wants, at most, cautious change.
If this is the definition of moderation, then moderation is simply conservatism in its original
meaning. It is a defense of the regime as formed and opposed to either rapid or extreme
change. But that can’t be the definition because it would leave us thinking of Nazi Party member
Heinrich Himmler as a moderate. After all, he wanted to preserve the regime as it was and
permit only slow and limited change if any at all. And in this game, Claus von Stauffenberg, who
tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler, would be regarded as an extremist and therefore not a nice
fellow. I didn’t know him, so he may not have been nice, but from where I sit, if he was an
extremist, he is the best defense of extremism possible.
There is the definition of the moderate as the centrist. In this model, there is a left wing and a
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right wing and the moderate is at the center. There are two problems with this theory. The first
is the idea that there is some continuum of ideologies from left to right. The idea of left and right
originated in the French Revolution. There was a tennis court where parties met, with the
supporters of monarchy on the far right and the supporters of republicanism on the far left. In
the center were parties that either couldn’t make up their mind or wanted to have their cake
and eat it too.
The Paris tennis court has ever after defined politics as leftist and rightist. In this configuration,
Hitler and Dwight Eisenhower would have sat near each other on the right, with Joseph Stalin
and Franklin Roosevelt together, closer to each other than to the right wing. In the center would
have been the listless – choose here the colleague you least like – who had no clear ideology,
living in that space where the two wings cancel out gravity. Therefore, the center holds no
weight.
The tennis court configuration has never made sense, any more than calling Stalin and
Roosevelt leftists. There is no continuum and no center. Roosevelt and Eisenhower shared an
ideology of liberal democracy, with quibbles on some details. If you would like, Hitler on the right
had more in common with Stalin on the left than either with Eisenhower or Roosevelt. There is
fascism, communism and liberal democracy, not on a continuum – as radically separate
alternatives.
We now come down to a potential definition of moderation: support for liberal democracy. I like
that because I like liberal democracy and everyone else loves moderation. But that ascribes a
virtue to liberal democracy that it would accept only in power. Neither the American nor French
revolutionaries were moderate. They were prepared to go to war and kill their enemies in the
name of what they believed. And in this, Goldwater was right – liberal democracy is an
immoderate commitment to certain values, particularly when it is an attempt to gain them. It is
hard to think of Thomas Jefferson as a moderate, except in demeanor perhaps.
And demeanor gives us another way of thinking of moderation. The confusion may rest in that
we have taken a human characteristic and tried to transfer it to political life. Moderation, as
Aristotle taught, was a virtue that all humans should have. The intemperate threaten the city not
because of their beliefs, but in the manner in which they believe. The timid are dangerous not
because of their beliefs, but in the weakness of their souls. And as weak men they cannot
defend the city. Excessive spiritedness and insufficient spirit are both dangerous. A moderate
amount of spirit, carefully calibrated to circumstances, able to exert itself and calm itself as
needed to achieve the collective good, is desirable. Moderation in all things is not a concept
limited to a single political party. Maximilien Robespierre was a liberal democrat. Moderation is a
condition of the soul needed by all humans and lacked by most.
When we translate this to politics it becomes difficult, because in our time politics and policies
are one, and policies are seen as moral imperatives that must be pursued at all costs. This was
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not always the case. The idea of moderation reigned, but not always for the best reasons, since
the corrupt can be moderate out of calculation, and the honest can be excessively proud of their
honesty.
There is no handbook for moderation. I went into Brooks Brothers one day (where such things
are still discussed) and saw a book on how to be a gentleman. Having a problem with that
concept as well as with my necktie, I bought the book. It contained helpful tips such as don’t call
your hostess ugly even if she is. But what the book didn’t say is that to be a gentleman you
must have that embedded in your soul, if not by birth then by learned inclination. It was not a
matter of dress or beliefs or knowing how to eat soup like the English. Being a gentleman was a
generosity of spirit, knowing how to be a friend and knowing how to be an enemy, and knowing
when each is appropriate.
I think in the end that is what moderation is, and it is not found in a political posture but in the
character of all humans. It is what we search for in a president because he above all must know
how to be a friend or an enemy. Moderates are not ideologues but gentleman and ladies of
principle. There is a world of difference between the two.
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